The ACLU of Pennsylvania jumped on the blogwagon with the Sept. 26 launch of its site, Speaking Freely. The blog is devoted to day-by-day updates of the federal court case Kitzmiller et al v. Dover Area School Board, which is debating the constitutionality of teaching "intelligent design" alongside Darwin's evolution theory in public schools.

Dover Area School District in York has been pushing to include in science classes

the text Of Pandas and People, which offers a less-concrete approach to the long and widely accepted Darwinian theory. According to some critiques, Of Pandas and People maintains that a "designer" created different species, fully formed.

"Teaching students about religion's role in world history and culture is proper, but disguising a particular religious belief as science is not," says ACLU of Pennsylvania legal director Witold Walczak. "Intelligent design is a Trojan horse for bringing religious creationism back into public-school science classes."

Sara Mullen, associate director of the ACLU in Philadelphia, created Speaking Freely (aclupa.blogspot.com) because the group "wanted to give [people] more in-depth coverage of the trial and one place to [get] the information." The blog gives daily morning and afternoon transcripts of the trial, stories and editorials written in local newspapers, and responses and suggestions from blog readers.

The blog also gives a roster of those in attendance at the trial. For instance, Darwin's own great-great-grandson, Matthew Chapman, showed up to the Dover fire station for the viewing of the video More Reasons Why Evolution Is Stupid.

"We wanted people to be able to comment," says Mullen. "We wanted to create a community for people to talk about the case." The site seems to be gaining in popularity; it had received 1,033 individual visitors as of Oct. 6.

As far as individual responses, they are overwhelmingly pro-ACLU. "We did get a few brave people [for intelligent design]," says Mullen, "but most people are sympathetic to our side."